My personal thoughts about the burqa are that the female Muslim community is diverse, some choose to wear signs of their faith of various kinds (have to say Burqa seems pretty rare have seen it more in tourist areas) some don’t wear any symbols There are a host of women in the UK Muslim community who are more than able to speak for themselves plus the issue of clothing is widely debated in the wider female Muslim community online/in books/articles/websites/telly/radio. It seems therefore inappropriate to impose on that community from outside. Should not these women, like all women, be given the space to decide on these issues themselves? If there are women who are being forced to wear burqas – and I haven’t read enough research on this to know if that’s even the case in the UK – and a representative lobby asks for assistance, fine.
In addition, if it’s true that there are UK Muslim women not allowed out in public without certain items of clothing, would not banning these items reinforce the very thing that, it’s claimed, others posting here want to prevent? Might not a ban effectively mean that such women are excluded from public life, not able to go out at all, how will that be of real use to these women?
Finally it's a dangerous time for Muslim women who wear any item that singles out their faith, many have been viciously attacked, only last year a pregnant Muslim woman in Bletchley was so savagely assaulted she lost her baby, the man who attacked her made sure to ridicule her outfit while kicking her stomach. Women who are in public wearing any outward symbol of Islam are brave, they deserve support they certainly don’t deserve to be ridiculed, Boris Johnson should be ashamed of his words and he should be disciplined to the full extent possible for reinforcing this kind of attitude, words can literally hurt in this area.